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Human beings are in a way condemned to wonder about how the different spheres of life, fit together and if they are good, true or beautiful – if you ask those kinds of questions, then you are doing philosophy.

Has philosophy progressed? Unlike the natural and human sciences, which have split off from philosophy to pursue their own methods (although the historical content of the evolution of these traditions is vast and interesting itself), philosophy doesn’t seem to have the same impact on people as being ‘progressive’.

We certainly can’t say it is a linear progression, as much of foundationalism has been left behind, but Karl Popper at least explained that falsificationism can at least refute old ideas and philosophy has a reputation for recycling old ideas in modern times, Plato and Artistotle are just as relevant as they were 2000 years ago.

We could say philosophical ‘progress’ is helical (like a helix spiral), but the twists of the spiral connect to previous periods throughout history and some of it drops off altogether. Chomsky recycled Cartesian (Descrates) innate ideas in his theory of how we learn language, that we simply cannot be a tabula rasa (blank slate/blackboard) in order to learn language. Spinoza has also come back into usage in certain cognitive sciences to explain the connection between body and mind.

Philosophy comes down to values, progress is a question of valuing, what is better, or worse.

Realism seems to be the main conceptual notion of truth in philosophy, with anti-realism as its opponent, relativism being the main one. There is only so much we can grasp through the intellect and with reason, which is restricted by the incredibly complex environments we occupy in our time. To some degree we can have an effect on these environments through our own experience, what Kantians will call funding – an analogy is to think of a horses hoof, which does not so much shape the ground it presses against, but stumbles and scuffs and sometimes fits and sometimes it does not. In the same way, our biological inheritance of the central nervous system that makes up the main components of our cognitive capabilities does not completely shape the world around it, but sometimes it can grasp one or two spheres of life and try to explain them.

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